Fairfax staff briefed on newsroom restructure

Updated
June 27, 2012 13:01:00

Fairfax staff are being briefed this morning on a radical restructure to the way their newsrooms work. Under the new model, newsrooms at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, filing for online and mobile platforms as well as print editions. The changes come on top of mass redundancies at Fairfax papers, a controversial bid for board seats by Gina Rinehart, new editors at both capital city mastheads, and a plummeting share price. Ben Schneiders is the Workplace Editor at the Age and head of the union house committee at the newspaper.

EMILY BOURKE: Fairfax staff have this morning been briefed on the radical restructure of the way their newsrooms work.

Under the new model, newsrooms at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, filing for online and mobile platforms as well as print editions.

The changes come on top of mass redundancies at Fairfax papers, a controversial bid for board seats by Gina Rinehart, new editors at both capital city mastheads, and a plummeting share price.

Ben Schneiders is the workplace editor at the Age and head of the union house committee at the newspaper.

He spoke to our reporter, Liz Hobday, and says that staff are broadly in support of the latest restructure.

LIZ HOBDAY: Are staff in favour of this new model for the newsroom?

BEN SCHNEIDERS: I think staff believe the change is overdue. We want to see, you know, a model that reflects where our audiences are going. People are reading increasingly the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald online or on iPads or on mobile phones. There's also still a sizeable number of people that read the printed paper.

So, we're broadly comfortable with the new approach. It reflects where the audience is going.

LIZ HOBDAY: I've been told by other staff at the Age this morning, that the atmosphere in the newsroom is one of fear.

Is that something that you've picked-up on? You've said you're in support of this model, but is that something that other staff broadly agree with?

BEN SCHNEIDERS: Yeah, look there's a degree of alarm about the level of change at the Age at the moment, but there's probably four or five major things going on at once. We've got a hostile shareholder, Gina Rinehart, taking a big stake in the company. We've got very large redundancies; we've got this major change in how we work. You just have to look at the share price of Fairfax everyday to see that the company's clearly in some trouble. We had a change of editor just on Monday. So we're dealing with four or five major bits of change.

In terms of the editorial review, there'll be people who have different opinions. But I think there's some merit - I think there's some obvious merit in us embracing the future in the way that we report, in the way that we work. But, it's got to be a way that maintains quality and independent journalism.

And, that's what we're really concerned about, that we can keep that with this new future. And the question around resources is critical to that. Can we do it with a lot less staff? And that's one that is unanswered.

LIZ HOBDAY: You were on the working group for this model, I understand. How long did it take to develop?

BEN SCHNEIDERS: Well, it's been going for many months and it's going to be a pretty radical way we change in how we work and how we report. Staff are going to be working earlier in the day and we're going - it's essentially a digital first model, which means we focus on reporting for online or the iPad first, whilst still reporting for print.

So, there's been two things that have been going on: we've had this review, which staff have been consulted on well and had a lot of input in. But, on top of that, we've had last week's announcement where there's going to be very large job-cuts, which is a separate announcement to the editorial review.

So, our concern is: how do we do good quality independent journalism in a digital future, but with far fewer staff? That's really the question we've got.

LIZ HOBDAY: Journalists are being described in the documents that have been circulated to Fairfax staff as, first responders. Doesn't this suggest that their work will be primarily responsive to news events, rather than actually breaking news?

BEN SCHNEIDERS: Well that is a concern, like, we don't want to become the glorified newswire. We've also been told that there's going to be a focus on investigative journalism and the sort of journalism that we've become known for, which, I guess, is breaking stories rather than just sort of reacting to stories.

So, those sorts of things will need to be worked through, but what we want to maintain, out of what we've done in the past, is quality, independent journalism.

And that involves reporters having time to dig around, investigate, come up with original stories. It doesn't come from being, essentially, a glorified newswire.